


More Than a Feeling

by ItsTheFear



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29086857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsTheFear/pseuds/ItsTheFear
Summary: Claire Redfield never expected to find her soulmate when she came to Raccoon City looking for her missing brother. And she didn't, really. But she did find a man just as broken as her, who pushed through everything stacked against him and came out on the other side. Someone she could trust and seek comfort in, no matter what. (Rating will go up in future chapters)
Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy/Claire Redfield
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

They escaped. She couldn’t believe it, but they had actually escaped.

Claire Redfield could feel her heart frantically beating in her chest, pounding wildly to the point where she was sure it was going to burst from sheer exhaustion. Had her heart ever beat slowly, normally even, since she had arrived in a zombie infested Raccoon City? Doubtful. What was even more doubtful was whether her heart would ever beat at a normal pace again.

She had heard countless stories over the years of PTSD. Thankfully, her older brother himself hadn’t been diagnosed with it, but he had known several people who were unfortunate enough to succumb to the endless haunting of tragic and traumatic events from their past. He had told her of the relentless nightmares, leaving them unable to get a proper night sleep which would only worsen their state of mind. Different sounds and noises would trigger different memories that left them reliving their traumatic event repeatedly.

She shuddered at the idea of her, Leon or Sherry waking up one day only to realize they were staring down the relentless, haunting face of PTSD. Would any of them ever feel safe sleeping in a dark, quiet room again? Closing her eyes tightly and taking inhaling and exhaling a deep breath to try and calm her racing heartbeat, Claire could already see the figures stumbling towards her in the dark. How would she deal with being alone in her room surrounded by nothing but darkness and complete silence? Every little noise she heard would bring her right back here, to the depts of hell that had become Racoon City. Claire had always been one of those people who needed her room to be pitch black and as silent as possible in order to sleep, but something told her those days were over.

Opening her eyes to look at the tired young girl curled into a ball against her, Claire’s heart ached at the thought of Sherry and how this would affect her. She was only twelve years old but she had already seen horrible things, things that would traumatize an adult. And to top it all off she had lost not one but both of her parents.

Claire could relate to that last part more than anything. She hadn’t been much older than Sherry was when her parents-

“I think this is as far as we’re going to be able to go,” Leon said suddenly, tearing Claire away from her thoughts. “It looks like there’s a bunch of debris covering the tracks, so we’ll have to get out and walk from here.”

Claire felt Sherry stir against her and looked down at the young girl nestled into her. “Are you going to be okay to walk for a bit, Sherry?”

Rubbing her tired eyes, Sherry nodded silently and sat up straight, letting out a yawn and stretching as Claire got to her feet and held out a hand towards her. Taking it, Sherry couldn’t help but glance towards the end of the train car they were riding in.

Just a few minutes ago she had seen her dad, a _monster_ , try to kill the three of them. Claire had managed to dislodge the car that William had been in as Leon delivered one last blow. And just like that, Sherry had watched her father disappear into the flames that had engulfed the tunnel behind them.

“Sherry? Are you okay?” A concerned Claire asked, knowing exactly what was going through the young girl’s mind at that moment.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I’m okay. Lead the way.” Sherry was heart broken to have lost both of her parents, make no mistake. She had often dreamt of having both of them at home with her, doing stuff that parents are supposed to do with their kids. Like a normal family. _One day,_ Sherry would tell herself every night as she went to sleep alone in her home. When she was younger, more hopeful than she was now she would often find herself dreaming of having a normal life with her family. Her parents would still go to work every morning but they would always be back home by the time Sherry would get home from school.

But they had never been there for her like Sherry had wanted, like any child deserved. And on the rare occasion that they were around they were distant and cold. On more than a few occasions Sherry had wondered why they had even bothered to have a child together if they were going to treat her the way that they did. She mourned for them but not the way she knew she probably should. She barely knew them, how sad could she be by losing them?

And yet still, Sherry found her eyesight blurring from tears forming in her eyes. Whatever hope she had that one day her parents would wake up and realize how neglectful they had been, that they would push work to the side and focus on their daughter, had vanished. There was no future of having a life with her parents. Not anymore. It had been snatched away like the countless lives that had been lost within the city.

Forcing back the tears that were burning at her eyes, Sherry kept them focused on the ground in front of her as she took Claire’s hand once again and followed Leon out of the train car. She let Leon grab a hold of her waist, carefully lifting her off the car to put her safely on the ground beside him. He groaned and gritted his teeth together, trying to ignore the pain that shot through his body from his gunshot wound. Sherry watched him, concerned, as he held a hand out for Claire to steady herself before jumping down to join them.

A small smile spread across Sherry’s dry lips as her eyes darted back and forth between them. They weren’t her parents and to be perfectly honest she barely even knew them, but there was something there that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something between them that felt right, that felt like what she had been searching for for as long as she could remember. A _family._

“So what’s the plan now, Leon?” Claire asked as the three of them carefully walked towards the tunnel’s exit.

“I’d say to get as far away from Raccoon City as possible,” Leon said with a sigh. He hadn’t a clue what their next move should be. What were they supposed to do with Sherry? Where the hell were her parents? Were they still in the city? Were they even still alive?

There were too many questions and too many answers he needed but not before he was able to sit down and catch his breath for the first time since he arrived in that God forsaken city.

“So…are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?” Sherry asked, hopefully.

To her confusion, they both chuckled under their breath as if she were silly for even thinking it.

“No, we uh…we actually just met last night,” Leon explained.

“Yeah. That would have been one hell of a first date, though,” Claire smirked.

Sherry pointed out a truck approaching them, suggesting that maybe the driver could give them a ride. She didn’t think it would matter to any of them where they would go, as long as it was far away from Raccoon City. She stared at the truck as it grew larger the closer it came. She could hear Leon and Claire talk amongst one another, but she wasn’t paying enough attention to hear exactly what they were saying. All she knew was that Claire took her by the hand once more and pulled her off to the side while Leon remained in the road, eyeing down the truck as it closed the distance between them.

To their dismay, the man driving the truck didn’t bother slowing down. He simply flipped them off and kept driving towards the city. Wherever they were going they would have to find their own way, at least for now. Which suited Claire and Leon just fine at this point. They had already managed to come this far on their own, why not go just a little farther?

Sherry took Claire and Leon’s hands as they continued walking away from the city, Sherry perking up to suggest the idea of them adopting her. They had a good laugh as she continued. She suggested they adopt a puppy and a parrot and before Claire knew it her racing heart had calmed down for the first time since she had ridden into Raccoon City. _You’re going to be okay,_ Claire told herself. _The three of us are going to be just fine._

~*~*~*~*

Claire had no idea how long they had been walking and had even less of an idea what time it was by the time they had finally stumbled across a small motel. It didn’t look like it was much but to them it was the safe haven they had been searching for. Leon had agreed to wait outside while Claire and Sherry went inside to get a room. They didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention and if an injured police officer walked in to book a room that would be exactly what would happen. They needed to figure out their next move before letting anyone know they had managed to escape the fallen city they had left behind.

It only took a few minutes before Leon heard Claire call out to him to follow her up the stairs towards a room at the end of the hall.

“I saw a vending machine at the other end of the hall. You two wait here, I’ll go get some food and drinks for us and then you’re going right to bed, Sherry.”

Too tired to argue against her imminent bedtime, Sherry nodded and kicked off her shoes before jumping onto one of the two beds in the cramped room. Groaning as he took a seat at the small table beside the second bed, Leon felt his entire body relax the minute he leaned back into what would have normally been an uncomfortable chair. Right now, this chair couldn’t have possibly felt better to his aching body.

Claire returned with questionable sandwiches but there wasn’t a single objection between the three of them. Having spent the entire night literally running for their lives with no food or water, at this point they would have eaten anything that was put in front of them. Washing the old sandwiches down with water, Sherry was passed out in the bed within minutes of handing Claire her empty wrapper.

“Do I want to ask where her parents are?” Leon asked in a hushed voice, his eyes flashing to Sherry before turning back to the woman sitting at the table across from him. He already knew the answer before Claire could tell him.

“Dead.” Claire’s fingers twirled her water bottle wrapper against the cheap wood of the table in front of her. She crinkled it between her fingers, sighing. “That…thing you fought in the train? Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was her dad.”

Leon’s mouth fell open and Claire raised a finger to silence the questions she already knew were coming. “Wait. I got us a little something for once Sherry fell asleep.”

Digging into the bag she had brought back from getting food and drinks, Claire sat two cans of beer on the table. Leon cocked an eyebrow at her, chuckling under his breath.

“It’s a little early for a beer, don’t you think? Also, where the hell did you find beer? They have them in the vending machines here?”

“First of all, we’ve been up all night so no, it’s not too early for beer. It’s actually a quite suitable end to the longest night of our lives. Secondly, I saw it in the office when I got us the room. The guy had a sign up for beer and I figured that after the night we just had we more than deserve a beer or two. Or three or four, you know, whatever floats your boat.” Claire shrugged, cracking her beer open and lifting it up towards her lips.

“Wait a second,” Leon said, reaching forward and wrapping his hand around her wrist to stop her. “Exactly how old are you?” He asked with a smirk.

“Oh, Leon, you’re hilarious. Did anyone ever tell you that? What are you going to do, arrest me, officer?” Claire rolled her eyes and pulled her arm free, bringing the cold can to her lips and taking a big gulp of beer.

Leon laughed and shook his head. “Alright, Redfield. You win this round. Cheers to us, somehow surviving the absolute fucking hell that was Raccoon City.”

Raising her beer to gently clink it against his, Claire grinned. “Cheers, Kennedy.”


	2. Chapter 2

Claire chugged the remainder of her beer and winced at the warm, bitter taste as she gulped it down. It wasn’t the best beer in the world but after everything she had seen and been through in the last few hours, it tasted like heaven. Anything to numb and silence all the unrelenting feelings and endless thoughts swarming through her mind.

“Okay,” she said as she put her hands on her hips. “I’m not entirely sure how to do this, but I mean, I guess I could try?”

Leon groaned as he slipped his shirt over his head and tossed it on the ground, joining his vest on the bathroom floor. He glanced down at his bandaged wound and winced when he touched it lightly.

“Whatever you do can you please just be careful?” Leon practically begged. He had somehow managed to take control of the excruciating pain from the gunshot wound until now, but he had other things to distract him from it. It was easy to forget about the intense burning and painfully tight sensation when he was running from undead monsters. But now, sitting here in the bathroom he was suddenly all too aware of how much it hurt. And it fucking hurt.

Claire opened the first aid kit she found in the closet by the entrance of the motel room and scoffed. “No Leon, I was planning on absolutely destroying you. Are you _sure_ you don’t want to go to a hospital? What if I do this wrong and just fuck it up even more?”

“I can’t go to a hospital Claire, we’ve already talked about this. We have to stay low for a while. I just need you to clean it, you can’t fuck it up more than it already is. Or at least I hope not.”

“Well, I’m just saying that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and I swear to god if I puke after you take that bandage off, I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Well, if you puke that would suck for me, since I’m currently sitting on the toilet.” The toilet seat was down but he was right, technically he _was_ on the toilet.

Letting out a sharp breath, Claire nodded her head. “Okay, I’m ready. Here, let me take this off.”

_Alright Claire, focus._ She told herself as she looked at the bandage, trying to find the edge so she could unwrap it from Leon’s bare chest. Leaning over him, Claire finally found it in the back. She took in a deep breath as she carefully took a hold of it and began unwrapping it from Leon’s skin.

_Dear God, how does he smell Good? Seriously, after all of that how does he still smell good?_ She had other issues at hand, like the fact that her brother was still missing, that she had encountered the most terrifying, haunting creatures she could ever imagine, that she was now responsible for a twelve-year-old and yet, here she was, smelling the cop who had saved her life.

In her defense, it had been a while. Like, it had been a _long_ while. It hadn’t been much of a priority these past several months, if she was being honest. For some reason discovering that her boyfriend was cheating on her had kind of puta damper on the whole sex thing.

It took a few seconds for Claire to realize that her hands were shaking as she peeled the bandage off Leon’s chest. _Get it together, Claire. The man is sitting here with a hole in his chest, now is not the time to get all giddy._

Was she nervous because she was, in a way, undressing Leon or was it because she was about to clean a gunshot wound when she had absolutely no idea how to do that? _It’s the gunshot wound. Definitely the gunshot wound._

“By the look of terror on your face I’m going to take a wild guess that you’ve never done this before?” Leon asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“My brother taught me a lot of things, including how to clean wounds. But I don’t know what to do with a gunshot wound, exactly. Like, are there pieces of the bullet still in there? I can’t try to get them out, I’ll definitely puke all over you and everything in this bathroom if you expect me to go looking around in there.”

Leon laughed under his breath. “Let’s just clean it out for now and wrap it up with a new bandage. We’ll figure out the rest later.”

That was fine by Claire. Setting the bandage on the sink counter, Claire mentally prepared herself to clean Leon’s wound to the best of her ability. The last thing he needed was to survive a night under constant attack from the undead only to succumb to a gunshot wound once he finally escaped from hell.

“How do you think all of this is going to affect Sherry?” Leon asked in a low voice. He winced at Claire’s touch as she gently cleaned his wound.

He thought about the young girl sleeping in the next room and his heart instantly broke. He couldn’t even understand how she had managed to fall asleep in the first place. Him and Claire were both exhausted, he could see it in her eyes, but neither of them could relax long enough to fall asleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see it all over again, flashing before him as if it was happening all over again.

The dead bodies littered around the city, the undead creatures that rose from the ground where they had fallen, stumbling towards him hungrily. The dogs, the creatures that were so mutated he couldn’t even figure out what it had been in the first place. The betrayal, the death, it was too much.

And yet a little girl who had lost everything she had ever known in a single night was fast asleep on the other side of the bathroom door. _Good for her,_ Leon thought. _Maybe she’ll be okay after all._

“Everyone deals with grief and trauma differently,” Claire said. She had learned that years ago.

She remembered the night she found out her parents were dead. She had slept through the phone ringing in the living room, but Chris hadn’t. He came into her room, the light from the hallway shinning into her eyes as her older brother shook her awake. Never in her life had Claire seen Chris look the way he did that night.

He looked scared, shocked and in disbelief as tears began to swell in his eyes. _They’re dead_ , Chris told her. And just like that, their lives had changed forever.

Claire had been lucky in the fact that she hadn’t gone through the loss of her parents alone. Her brother had been there to help her along the way, even though there had been times when he was the one that needed someone. He had never let her see that side of him, though. That vulnerable, broken side that Chris had only ever allowed out when he was alone in his room and sure that Claire couldn’t hear him. He had always been there for her first, he was the only one she had now. He took care of himself second and that was just how Chris had been since the moment he had answered the phone that night.

In a split second, every aspect of Chris’s life had changed. He hadn’t had any real direction that he was following when it came to his life before that night. No goals, nothing he had been working towards career wise. He was young and he figured he had had all the time in the world to worry about what to do when he “grew up”. And then, suddenly, it was time to grow up. It was time to buckle down and figure out finances and how taxes worked and how he could provide Claire with the life that she deserved, the life that their parents would have given her.

If it hadn’t been for her older brother’s support and love throughout the years, Claire had no doubt that she wouldn’t have made it this far.

But Sherry was alone. She didn’t have a big brother to hold her as she wept in bed or who would make it a point to be a positive impact in her life. She wasn’t going to have a loved one there to make sure she got to school on time and kept up her studies so she could get into a good college. Hell, even when Sherry’s parents were alive, she _still_ hadn’t had that type of support.

“She has us,” Leon said simply, watching Claire’s delicate features as she finished cleaning him up and prepared the new bandage. He hadn’t anticipated suddenly having to be responsible for an orphaned twelve-year-old when he headed out to his first day yesterday, yet here he was, actually not hating on the idea of taking the scared little girl in. It’s amazing how much a night of being face to face with death and decay can change you.

“She has you,” Claire corrected him. “I still need to find Chris. He’s out there somewhere. I don’t know what’s going on, but I need to find him.” She paused for a moment before adding, “he’s all I have.”

Leon had been so distracted with the young woman in front of him that he hadn’t even noticed she was finishing up until he felt the clean bandage wrap against his skin. She leaned over him, strands of her auburn hair falling over her face. He silently watched her work, noticing her eyebrows furrowing together as she struggled to tie the bandage around him.

“Are you struggling there, Redfield?” Leon smirked. He knew Claire had to leave; he knew she eventually would. He couldn’t blame her; he would do the same thing if he was in her shoes. So why had there been a part of him, a small part of him, that thought she might stay? Why had there been a small part of him that had hoped that?

“Yeah, I guess so. It’s been a while since I bandaged up a gunshot wound; you know. I’m a little rusty.”

Leon laughed and told her to keep wrapping it so the end of it was in the front of him so he could take over. She did as she was told and handed him the wrap before turning to wash her hands in the sink.

“Jesus,” she muttered to herself, finally looking at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t expecting to look flawless, like she normally did obviously, but damn. She wasn’t expecting _that._

“Yeah, you look like crap,” Leon joked. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I’ve definitely seen better.”

Claire dried her hands with the small hand towel hung on the hook beside her and threw it at the rookie police officer. “You obviously haven’t seen yourself,” she pointed out. “Out of everything that I ran into in the last few hours I’d say you’re the least attractive of them all.”

Groaning as he got to his feet, Leon turned to face his reflection and rubbed his tired eyes. They were both covered in blood and dirt, though neither of them could tell exactly what was what. It wasn’t until that moment that both of them realized they probably should have told Sherry to have a shower before letting her pass out, but what the hell. The girl has been through enough, she deserved to sleep for twelve hours covered in dirt if she wanted to.

“I’m gonna shower,” Leon and Claire suddenly said in unison.

Leon grinned and cocked and eyebrow towards Claire as she burst out into laughter. “Keep dreaming, Leon,” she said as she held the door open, motioning for him to leave.

He flashed her another quick smirk before exiting the bathroom. _Don’t mind if I do._


End file.
